The Samsung 830 SSD thread

[Sasha-1]

I bought the MBP just last week, so it's crashed once (or more) per day, except for today.

I plan to leave the 4GB RAM in for the next 2-3 days. If I don't receive anymore crashes, then I'm going to RMA the RAM. The question is, should I try and get a replacement kit from NewEgg, or just should I just get a flat-out refund?

I'm wondering if I would be better off just picking up some certified Kingston RAM from Amazon. The only catch is, those kits only come in 8GB, with 4GB DIMM's. I will probably never use all 16GB, but more is always better right?

If they send me a new kit for the RMA and it works, I'd be happy.

I have over 200+ GB of free space on my SSD still.

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My machine gets warm, but it wasn't doing anything stressful during the crash. Mostly just several browser tabs open.

I've only bought memory from two companies for Macs. RamJet and OWC. Back when the G4 was the hot processor in the Mac, like the QuickSilver, I was a tech guy working in an ad agency in San Francisco. They had a bunch of G4s with odd memory in them. It was a handful and then some to try to fix Macs that were randomly quitting. THis is System 9 days. I believed unconditionally that the memory was the problem. I was called quit a few things by other techs. Memory is memory is memory. It became so frustrating for me that I put my money where my mouth is. I bought with my own money, memory for most of the higher end users. Replacing all their RAM with RAMJET ram. For my own Dual 2 GHz G5, I chucked Apple's RAM and used RAMJET as well. The random stalls stopped.

Later on I took a job in DVD replication and insisted that the company buy me a Mac. They got me a refurb dual 1.8 GHz G5. And the tech stuck memory right from a PC into that G5. And it too randomly quit. I again bought memory with my own money again from RAMJET. The problems went away.

I know how weird it sounds. But in my experience top quality memory matters. Macs for some reason seem to require the highest quality RAM. Which makes no sense to me because when it comes to PCs, I can throw pretty much any old garbage in them and it will just work. Not so with Macs in my experience.

Right now I have 16 GBs of OWC memory. I like to buy memory from a company that makes 100% of their living on the Mac platform. Crucial in my estimation makes 95% of their money on the PC. I'd be willing to bet that they do no testing on the Mac at all.

I read the spec on that memory you have and it does seem to match the spec of my memory, even though my memory is twice the price. So what's different? I have no idea. What I have is years of experience time and time again proving to me that where you buy it matters. Not just one machine here and there. Many machines over the last ten years. Time and time again it keeps making a difference.

I just wonder why both RAMJET and OWC memory cost twice the price. Why is their warranty lifetime and why have both of these companies managed to stay in business for so long with such long warranties? The answer is, in my opinion, that they sell products that last and work well. It's in their interest to do so.

If you really want 16 GBs, I'd go with OWC or RAMJET. Otherwise I wouldn't do it at all. And I would for sure return that memory.

 

[MJL]

If you really want 16 GBs, I'd go with OWC or RAMJET. Otherwise I wouldn't do it at all. And I would for sure return that memory.

For both the 2010 and 2011 Mac mini I bought the memory from OWC - did not want to chance anything at all. It makes not that much difference in price (I remember the days that a 1Mb - yes one Mega b - upgrade was as pricy as the computer itself. Actually I remember the days that a PC was as expensive as a decent car)

In the long run quality pays for itself since you finish up either paying twice (once for the junk and once for the good stuff) or you keep on taking the computer apart again and again which is not good either. Even if you do not pay twice you still waste lots of time and my time is worth more than the difference. And if I could not afford the money for decent 16 Gb then I would rather buy quality 8Gb.

 

[SolaStella]

The Samsung 830 SSD thread

I installed the Samsung 830 2 weeks ago into my 2009 17" MBP (no memory upgrade though) and had similar problems with freezing of the system after several hours of perfect operation. I tried the usual, including reinstalling Lion from scratch, with no success.
I finally RMA'd the drive hoping that another drive will solve the problem.

In my understanding the lack of TRIM cannot be the reason for this, any suggestions?

 

[shortcut3d]

I've been using 64GB of Corsair 8GB sticks going all the way back to when it was $250 per 8GB. I've not had any issues. You either got bad memory from Newegg.com or its the 830. I typically have a preference for Samsung memory followed by OWC, but my experiments with the first pair of 8GB Corsair went so well. OWC's quality is great, but you also pay a premium for their Mac support and Customer Service. Corsair is very large in comparison to OWC so they can offer volume discounts. Thus, I do not believe that OWC memory (physical part) is twice as good as Corsair. Better yes, but not twice as good. I've also had returns of OWC memory whereas Samsung memory has the only perfect track record for me.

 

[Acejam2k]

I installed the Samsung 830 2 weeks ago into my 2009 17" MBP (no memory upgrade though) and had similar problems with freezing of the system after several hours of perfect operation. I tried the usual, including reinstalling Lion from scratch, with no success.
I finally RMA'd the drive hoping that another drive will solve the problem.

In my understanding the lack of TRIM cannot be the reason for this, any suggestions?

Can you describe the exact scenario and types of freezes that you experienced? For me, the first couple times all windows would freeze, and the mouse pointer would *NOT* beachball. I could move the mouse cursor around, but everything else was inactive/frozen. Later on, the additional freezes were pretty much the same thing, but I received a beachball. All windows frozen, but I could move the beachball around.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but based off the reading/searching I've done here on the forum, bad RAM usually results in a kernel panic, with the whole "Please restart your machine" message on the grey screen.

Perhaps I need to RMA the Samsung drive....

 

[Sasha-1]

Can you describe the exact scenario and types of freezes that you experienced? For me, the first couple times all windows would freeze, and the mouse pointer would *NOT* beachball. I could move the mouse cursor around, but everything else was inactive/frozen. Later on, the additional freezes were pretty much the same thing, but I received a beachball. All windows frozen, but I could move the beachball around.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but based off the reading/searching I've done here on the forum, bad RAM usually results in a kernel panic, with the whole "Please restart your machine" message on the grey screen.

Perhaps I need to RMA the Samsung drive....

Yes, agreed. Bad ram in my experience results in a kernel panic. I haven't had one in so long I forgot what they look like. Haven't had a good kernel panic since the dual G5.

 

[SolaStella]

Well, the scenarios where like this: It began with a straight "please restart your computer". Then randomly only the active application froze, or was unable to restart "because it is already open" when it was force quit. Later even a complete restart of the OS wouldn't do the trick. Next day for a brief period everything was fine! But soon it went beserk again with eternal beachball, or it froze during startup. I suspected a thermal problem, but the ssd was quite cool. I even tried to wipe the disk and install Lion totally from scratch. But the install program froze after few minutes. I also tried to reinstall with different Time Machine backups, which also failed every time.

So i figured that the disk must be sick, since everything went fine when i inserted my old hdd again. But it was slooow, so i really hope that the problem is solved when i get the new ssd.

I haven't tried with the TRIM hack though, but this shouldn't change anything related to my problem i guess.

I read about a guy on a german forum with similar problems and the same hardware. Only solution for him was buying a Crucial M4 instead.

Hope this helps!

 

[Acejam2k]

I suspect my issues might've been caused by an improperly seated RAM module.

For those that are interested, see my post here: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=13974734#post13974734

Another thing that I tried was disabling Spotlight indexing. I doubt this had anything to do with it, but I read it was worth trying. (but I'm pretty sure my SSD is working great at this point)

 

[appleraj]

I've only bought memory from two companies for Macs. RamJet and OWC. Back when the G4 was the hot processor in the Mac, like the QuickSilver, I was a tech guy working in an ad agency in San Francisco. They had a bunch of G4s with odd memory in them. It was a handful and then some to try to fix Macs that were randomly quitting. THis is System 9 days. I believed unconditionally that the memory was the problem. I was called quit a few things by other techs. Memory is memory is memory. It became so frustrating for me that I put my money where my mouth is. I bought with my own money, memory for most of the higher end users. Replacing all their RAM with RAMJET ram. For my own Dual 2 GHz G5, I chucked Apple's RAM and used RAMJET as well. The random stalls stopped.

Later on I took a job in DVD replication and insisted that the company buy me a Mac. They got me a refurb dual 1.8 GHz G5. And the tech stuck memory right from a PC into that G5. And it too randomly quit. I again bought memory with my own money again from RAMJET. The problems went away.

I know how weird it sounds. But in my experience top quality memory matters. Macs for some reason seem to require the highest quality RAM. Which makes no sense to me because when it comes to PCs, I can throw pretty much any old garbage in them and it will just work. Not so with Macs in my experience.

Right now I have 16 GBs of OWC memory. I like to buy memory from a company that makes 100% of their living on the Mac platform. Crucial in my estimation makes 95% of their money on the PC. I'd be willing to bet that they do no testing on the Mac at all.

I read the spec on that memory you have and it does seem to match the spec of my memory, even though my memory is twice the price. So what's different? I have no idea. What I have is years of experience time and time again proving to me that where you buy it matters. Not just one machine here and there. Many machines over the last ten years. Time and time again it keeps making a difference.

I just wonder why both RAMJET and OWC memory cost twice the price. Why is their warranty lifetime and why have both of these companies managed to stay in business for so long with such long warranties? The answer is, in my opinion, that they sell products that last and work well. It's in their interest to do so.

If you really want 16 GBs, I'd go with OWC or RAMJET. Otherwise I wouldn't do it at all. And I would for sure return that memory.

read your input about good ram, very well said, just ordered 8g from OWC. A good insight always appreciated.

 

[philipma1957]

I suspect my issues might've been caused by an improperly seated RAM module.

For those that are interested, see my post here: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=13974734#post13974734

Another thing that I tried was disabling Spotlight indexing. I doubt this had anything to do with it, but I read it was worth trying. (but I'm pretty sure my SSD is working great at this point)

oil and water don't mix well.

i.e. try using 16gb of samsung ram with the samsung ssd.

my guess is the corsair would work with other ssds as would the samsung ssd would work with elipda ram or samsung ram. i have used dozens of combos of ram with ssds and have found that some ram and some ssds don't play well together. I have 7 or 8 samsung ssds on hand they are flawless but i no longer can test the corsair ram or the samsung ram I had sold it off. I have some elpida 8gb ram sticks and they work with all my ssds. intel kingston micron or samsung.

 

[Acejam2k]

oil and water don't mix well.

i.e. try using 16gb of samsung ram with the samsung ssd.

my guess is the corsair would work with other ssds as would the samsung ssd would work with elipda ram or samsung ram. i have used dozens of combos of ram with ssds and have found that some ram and some ssds don't play well together. I have 7 or 8 samsung ssds on hand they are flawless but i no longer can test the corsair ram or the samsung ram I had sold it off. I have some elpida 8gb ram sticks and they work with all my ssds. intel kingston micron or samsung.

This is good to know! I've been using my stock 4GB RAM for about ~2 days now and haven't seen any freezes/crashing yet. I did see some minor "stuttering" during my first-ever Time Machine backup, but based off the searching I've done, it seems to be a common issue with Lion.

I've also read that OWC uses Samsung RAM, so I'm thinking about picking up their 16GB RAM kit. It seems there are plenty of users who've had success with the Corsair 16GB kit, but how many of them are running a Samsung SSD? You make a valid point, but I can't think of a technical reason as to why this would occur. I've built dozens of high-end custom gaming PC's for myself, and never really had any issues with RAM, except for one bad batch of OCZ. (but we all know OCZ is crap)

 

[bozzza]

Hi,

I purchased a new MacBook Pro 13" last week, together with a 128GB Samsung 830 SSD. The installation and setup went smoothly, however I am experiencing the same problems as the original poster. Sporadically, the system will hang, for no apparent reason, I can still move the mouse, and the beachball appears after several seconds. After 10-20s more, everything goes back to normal... The CPU utilization is not high during these hangups.

I noticed that when I check the system swap files using

ls -hal /var/vm/

directly after the freeze, I see a new or modified swapfile with the current time. So I am guessing the problem has something to do with the system running out of memory and having trouble quickly creating swapfiles.

I'm using the original 4GB RAM and experienced the problem with a fresh install of OSX.

I'm hoping we can find a fix or collect helpful tips - currently I'm thinking that the Disk might be faulty, as it does not seem to be a widespread problem.

Otherwise, the system is VERY fast

Regards,
bozzza

PS. yesterday I enabled TRIM, but the problem still occurs

 

[Acejam2k]

Hi,

I purchased a new MacBook Pro 13" last week, together with a 128GB Samsung 830 SSD. The installation and setup went smoothly, however I am experiencing the same problems as the original poster. Sporadically, the system will hang, for no apparent reason, I can still move the mouse, and the beachball appears after several seconds. After 10-20s more, everything goes back to normal... The CPU utilization is not high during these hangups.

I noticed that when I check the system swap files using

ls -hal /var/vm/

directly after the freeze, I see a new or modified swapfile with the current time. So I am guessing the problem has something to do with the system running out of memory and having trouble quickly creating swapfiles.

I'm using the original 4GB RAM and experienced the problem with a fresh install of OSX.

I'm hoping we can find a fix or collect helpful tips - currently I'm thinking that the Disk might be faulty, as it does not seem to be a widespread problem.

Otherwise, the system is VERY fast

Regards,
bozzza

PS. yesterday I enabled TRIM, but the problem still occurs

Interesting. This issue is similar to mine - but a big difference: my system never returns to normal. I can let it sit for 20 minutes, and it will remain frozen. The 20-30 second pause issue that you're experiencing sounds like a SATA3 6Gbps issue. What is your negotiated link speed? Be sure to run Software Update and ensure you have the latest firmware patch from ~Septermber, which supposedly fixed a lot of these "stuttering" issues.

 

[bozzza]

The 20-30 second pause issue that you're experiencing sounds like a SATA3 6Gbps issue. What is your negotiated link speed?

The profiler says that the negotiated link is 6Gbps - I have also applied all updates, and did a PRAM/SMC reset. Any other Ideas?

Have your problems disappeared permanently now?

 

[Acejam2k]

The profiler says that the negotiated link is 6Gbps - I have also applied all updates, and did a PRAM/SMC reset. Any other Ideas?

Have your problems disappeared permanently now?

I haven't seen any issues for the past 3 days now. However, I went back to the stock 4GB RAM. My guess is that the 16GB Corsair RAM kit that I bought is either no good, or my MBP doesn't play nice with 16GB RAM. (or specifically, Corsair branded RAM)

I'm going to wait a few more days. If I receive no more crashes with the stock RAM, then I'm going to RMA the Corsair kit and pick up 16GB of OWC RAM, which is supposedly made by Samsung. Hopefully Samsung RAM and SSD's play nice together.

 

[Sasha-1]

I haven't seen any issues for the past 3 days now. However, I went back to the stock 4GB RAM. My guess is that the 16GB Corsair RAM kit that I bought is either no good, or my MBP doesn't play nice with 16GB RAM. (or specifically, Corsair branded RAM)

I'm going to wait a few more days. If I receive no more crashes with the stock RAM, then I'm going to RMA the Corsair kit and pick up 16GB of OWC RAM, which is supposedly made by Samsung. Hopefully Samsung RAM and SSD's play nice together.

I have 16 GBs of OWC Memory. It's not Samsung memory. It's from a company called, Elpida. The modules are here. The part number is: EBJ81UG8BAS0-DJF, which is 8GB 2Rx8 PC3-10600S-9-10-F3.

 

[bozzza]

I haven't seen any issues for the past 3 days now. However, I went back to the stock 4GB RAM. My guess is that the 16GB Corsair RAM kit that I bought is either no good, or my MBP doesn't play nice with 16GB RAM. (or specifically, Corsair branded RAM)

I'm going to wait a few more days. If I receive no more crashes with the stock RAM, then I'm going to RMA the Corsair kit and pick up 16GB of OWC RAM, which is supposedly made by Samsung. Hopefully Samsung RAM and SSD's play nice together.

I'm glad it seem to be working out for you!

I think I'll also send my drive back and try another one.

 

[smartbit]

I haven't seen any issues for the past 3 days now. However, I went back to the stock 4GB RAM. My guess is that the 16GB Corsair RAM kit that I bought is either no good,

Acejam2k, I had the same problems with a 2x4GB memory ValueRAM kit on a MBP early 2011. Tried several memory testing options including MBP memorytest & Windows7 and all tested the memory as fine. Then I replaced it with 2x KTA-MB1333/4G (Kingston's Apple branded) and never had any problems since (other than needing more memory). I'd try the OWC 2x8GB SO-DIMMs.

 

[freshass]

corsair 8gb.. I'm getting 460 read, 320 write.. no trim.. awesomeness

 

[Acejam2k]

Acejam2k, I had the same problems with a 2x4GB memory ValueRAM kit on a MBP early 2011. Tried several memory testing options including MBP memorytest & Windows7 and all tested the memory as fine. Then I replaced it with 2x KTA-MB1333/4G (Kingston's Apple branded) and never had any problems since (other than needing more memory). I'd try the OWC 2x8GB SO-DIMMs.

Awesome, thanks a TON for your input. (serious)

My MBP ran excellent all weekend with the stock 4GB RAM and the Samsung 830. This SSD is great! I'm confident my issues are RAM related now.

And back to NewEgg the RAM goes...

 

[bvanlieu]

Awesome, thanks a TON for your input. (serious)

My MBP ran excellent all weekend with the stock 4GB RAM and the Samsung 830. This SSD is great! I'm confident my issues are RAM related now.

And back to NewEgg the RAM goes...

It really is hit or miss with various brand RAM at times. It shouldn't
matter given the reference hardware specs used in this and other hardware out there but it seems to.

All of my Macs have Apple or OWC RAM in them.

15" MPB I am typing from has 2x4G with a samsung 830 happily chugging along. Yeah I spend a few bucks more but gave OWC some business and with RAM they are easy to deal with if you have an issue.

- b

 

[snowman1]

Hi,

I purchased a new MacBook Pro 13" last week, together with a 128GB Samsung 830 SSD. The installation and setup went smoothly, however I am experiencing the same problems as the original poster. Sporadically, the system will hang, for no apparent reason, I can still move the mouse, and the beachball appears after several seconds. After 10-20s more, everything goes back to normal... The CPU utilization is not high during these hangups.

I noticed that when I check the system swap files using

ls -hal /var/vm/

directly after the freeze, I see a new or modified swapfile with the current time. So I am guessing the problem has something to do with the system running out of memory and having trouble quickly creating swapfiles.

I'm using the original 4GB RAM and experienced the problem with a fresh install of OSX.

I'm hoping we can find a fix or collect helpful tips - currently I'm thinking that the Disk might be faulty, as it does not seem to be a widespread problem.

Otherwise, the system is VERY fast

Regards,
bozzza

PS. yesterday I enabled TRIM, but the problem still occurs

I also have the same trouble with the beachballs and can't figure out why they're happening. I am somewhat convinced that it's a RAM problem because I also got random lockups when I still had a regular HDD. But with the Samsung 830, I've been getting the lockups more often...

 

[bozzza]

I also have the same trouble with the beachballs and can't figure out why they're happening. I am somewhat convinced that it's a RAM problem because I also got random lockups when I still had a regular HDD. But with the Samsung 830, I've been getting the lockups more often...

Are you still using the original Apple RAM?

It seems I can reproduce a freeze by just using the "Black Magick Disk Test" from the App Store - the beachball appears after the first few runs... (however the swapfiles are not updated)
Very strange - is anyone else experiencing this?

 

[snowman1]

Are you still using the original Apple RAM?

It seems I can reproduce a freeze by just using the "Black Magick Disk Test" from the App Store - the beachball appears after the first few runs... (however the swapfiles are not updated)
Very strange - is anyone else experiencing this?

I'm actually using Crucial RAM right now, so over the weekend, I might move back to the stock RAM and see how it goes.

I will try the Black Magic disk test to see if I can get the same error.

EDIT: After typing in " ls -hal /var/vm " into the terminal, I'm getting:

total 131072
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Dec 13 20:04 .
drwxr-xr-x 28 root wheel 952B Dec 2 21:16 ..
-rw------- 1 root wheel 64M Dec 13 20:04 swapfile0

20:04 was the time of my most recent crash...

 

[McBanjo]

I installed the Samsung 830 2 weeks ago into my 2009 17" MBP (no memory upgrade though) and had similar problems with freezing of the system after several hours of perfect operation. I tried the usual, including reinstalling Lion from scratch, with no success.
I finally RMA'd the drive hoping that another drive will solve the problem.

In my understanding the lack of TRIM cannot be the reason for this, any suggestions?

I had the same problem. There was a faulty RAM stick in my iMac. Try removing one of them and test again. The one that was faulty was the one that came in the machine from Apple, which is very annoying. $2800 and the RAM doesn't even work.